bacq2bacq

Where do I even begin? How about: Do you have a clue of the decades of harm caused by bad drug law? If you have something constructive to add, please do so. But tilting at nonsense windmill-strawmen of your own creation doesn't cut it. Who have you been talking to that thinks heroine in 7-11s is a good idea? I am trying to understand how to achieve certain desirable ends while not excessively incurring social cost. Is it possible to have a world where we are allowed the benefit of naturally occurring medicinal compounds, perhaps even some decent research? I'd like to think so. But I tire here of the "you disagree with me, so you must be a <label> who believes <stupid strawman>".

Thanks for calming down. I expect we agree more than the acrimony reveals, but just in case you think you read either of those positions in what I wrote, please re-read: I said neither. If you show me where, I'll retract it or clear up the misunderstanding. My proposed top-o-head 3-point legal framework summary is above. And I think that within that framework, it is possible that my wife gets the medicines she needs, and you can still be protected from heroine-addled runaway neighbours with lawnmowers.

Yes. This. And most of the "war on drugs" is based on it. With sprinklings of self-interest, greed, etc...

"ESAD,DF": Classy. Here, yet again, is where I am reading and trying to understand your written words, which I believe you have asked me to do, and I have already done: I disagree with the bolded statement. I interpreted your written words to mean "I, @Steam Flyer, have a right to dictate how your, @bacq2bacq, wife chooses medication." Or maybe for my wife it's ok, but not anyone else? I don't think your words are much open to alternate interpretation, though disagreement with a disjunctive clause might mean only disagreement with either/or. How am I misinterpreting this, SteamFlyer? I don't believe I quote you out of context. It was your very first response to me on this thread, dealing with a subject about which I have some passion, for very good reasons. I think I understand your words clearly, and I disagree with them, and took some slight offense as well. I'm not moving to understand more, better, until we clear up this little spat. I don't understand the relevance of your last sentence (by which I mean it was a bit silly to include it).

@Steam Flyer You seem to have more friends' lives' destroyed by currently-illegal hard drugs. I seem to win the big-pharma has messed up a life, and WOD prevented better self-care side. Call it even. My beef is that you explicitly said, quite directly - I even re-quoted it for you - that you would support state intervention in my wife's choice of medication. Stop dancing away. Retract that and we could continue. It's a very stupid position, and I don't think it is actually one you support. Ditto, my three-point summary re-quoted for you above. I don't think I am the libertari-droid you are looking for... my wife was prescribed these drugs, does not prescribe them, my daughter and son-in-law do the prescribing... whatever. You begin to fail the Turing test... increase the refresh rate on your DRAM, droid.

@Mismoyled Jiblet. Does wanting extremely tough regulation of BigPharma, regulation of addictive drugs with public rehab, and freedom of choice in personal health-care make me the loonie libertarian you imagine? I am occasionally amazed that the same windmills seem to be tilted-at, axes ground, instead of reading and responding to what is written... @phillysailor finally starts to get to the details... but, please, I never said drug use was victimless. I think the principle is a good one to have in mind when considering drug legislation. That is one position. I think SF sees himself as a victim of his friend's addictions. I think that is a bit of a selfish perspective, but WTF, it's at least an expressed on-topic position, though I think wrong. I do not believe I am *entitled* to the love, affection, care, etc of friends to the extent that I would endure the social cost of having the government try to interfere in their choices to change the outcomes. I think I have to earn it, and that it cannot be enforced.

@Steam Flyer it sounds like you have more direct experience with addicts of hard drugs amongst your peer group than I. None of my close friends have destroyed their lives by turning themselves into addicts like yours have. My experience comes from my wife having been prescribed various noxious pharmaceuticals for years (including a fentanyl patch) in failed attempts to manage pain. She does better now using cannabis, but has also suffered in the past from cannabis-induced hyper-emesis. Cannabis is not without side effects. Interestingly, this side-effect was discovered by a clever doctor who asked about seeking relief from the nausea by sitting in hot showers. My daughter and son-in-law are also doctors, so I get a different perspective from them as well (including from the emerg room). I have found you to express sensible opinions in the past, Steam, but here you are so far off base here you are not even in the stadium any more - no steam, just hot air: I disagree with the bolded statement. OK, I'll descend with y'all to the PA playing field: Well, fuck you steamflyer, you libertarian left-wing label label label. Your position is untenable. You seem to have confused your life amongst your addict-peers with mine. There, with that out of my system: are you a "victim" of your friends' decisions to destroy their lives with drugs? My wife is a clear and direct victim of the war on drugs, and of BigPharma. This may be where our opinions differ, on exactly the issue that participants in this board seem largely unwilling to address: who is the victim that creates the rationale for the legislation? Does the legislation actually help the target victim in practice? Does it create other collateral victims? The legislation that is the WOD creates far more victims than it helps.

I find it interesting that so far, no one has agreed with the principle that without a victim, we cannot have a crime. Have we really all been "educated" that far towards totalitarian mindsets? It's an incredibly important consideration in making law. The thing we must consider in all law is "who am I trying to help (ie, who is the "victim"), and is helping them worth the social cost?" @Mismoyled Jiblet. "actually no": Actually, yes, but I didn't just pay for mere contradiction. You make an excellent point about the non-existence of effective tests for cannabinoid intoxication. Yet we have very effective tests for alcohol-induced inebriation. Ask yourself: why? Largely, because drunk drivers are a huge problem and high drivers aren't very much of a problem. If the latter were false, one can be quite sure we would have better tests already, MAHD in addition to MADD, etc... @Steam Flyer Yes, these are mainly medical issues. So whence all your "libertarian bullshit" strawmen?

Sodebo-3 must have won because of negative-lift righting moment from her windward foils. I read it in a thread here somewhere... so it must be true. Apparently, if Sodebo's mainsail cart was less shocked than other boats', they would have a distinct advantage.

One word: "desiccating". Ok, another: "head".

If you are interested in facts, talk to someone to whom this shit has been prescribed.

As a starter, do some research on Lyrica, folks. The studies that allowed it to be put on the market. The things that is is prescribed for, and the duration. The side effects. The physical addiction. The psychological damage it does, the nightmares. The nature of the irreversible physical changes to the body. The horror stories. The natural alternatives. Come back and try and argue with me. Yes, it can help *some* people if used SHORT TERM and if the patient is rapidly weaned. But, mostly, it destroys people's lives. Then we could talk about all the other legal (and debilitating) drugs BigPharma pushes at us. But this isn't meant to be a thread about how fucked up the legal drugs are, it's meant to be about how keeping naturally occurring drugs illegal, and making sure we keep the WOD going (@SloopJohnB: correction: >10 decades, and counting...) is going to "solve the drug problem", right @hasher?

@Steam Flyer That's a pretty strong reaction to my rationalizing why other people have no right to push horrible addictive drugs with brutal debilitating and permanent side effects at my wife (legally, and at great cost to me and great profit to Big Pharma) while there exist naturally occurring plants and compounds that offer great relief and fewer side effects, yet which are made illegal by legislators. If you have any balls and brains you'll suck that toxic shit right back up the pie-hole it spewed from.

If I fly you and your family someplace and I am drunk and/or high, is there a problem as long as I don't crash? These are the details. @kent_island_sailor do you grant the basic premise that without victims we do not have crime? If not, there's not much point in continuing this Turing experiment, in which I attempt to discover if you have a brain.

"How infinitessimal is the importance of anything I do. How infinitely important it is that I do it." Many people find it difficult to deal with Voltaire's assertion, but this is an infinitely importunate repository of Tom's links.